Gear S3 Smartwatch Now iOS-Compatible

Samsung has released an iOS app that lets iPhone owners pair their smartphones to Gear S2 and S3 smartwatches.

(CCM) — Samsung has launched an audacious bid to poach Apple's customers by announcing that it has made its Gear S2 and S3 smartwatches compatible with the iPhone. To do this, it has launched a Gear S iOS app, which is now available for free on Apple's App Store. Using the Gear S app, iPhone users can connect Samsung's smartwatches to their devices to receive notifications, such as text and WhatsApp messages; answer or reject phone calls; and install apps and watch faces. Users will also be able to track their fitness by monitoring distances and routes traveled, running paces, calories burned, and heart rates; they will then have the option to sync this information to their iPhones using Samsung's S Health service. Samsung's smartwatches run the Tizen operating system, and previously, they were only able to pair with smartphones running Google's Android mobile operating system.

The Gear S2 and Gear S3 are now compatible with iPhone 5 and newer running iOS 9.0 or above. The Gear S3 smartwatch was announced at the IFA consumer technology show in Berlin in September but has been in short supply around the world since becoming available in the last few weeks. Apple's Watch is only able to communicate with devices running iOS.